Shitty Jobs and the Power of Perspective
Over the early part of my professional career, I was shocked to learn how many people have never worked a truly shitty job.
The things they would complain about betrayed the fact that they had never suffered through a shift as a server at a restaurant, performed manual labor in the summer sun, or been re-folding a shirt for the fifth time that day while being on the business end of a Customer Karen meltdown.
This is truly their loss. Few things in life provide the ROI of working a dead-end job when you are young and can relatively afford to be broke, exhausted, and frustrated. That ROI mainly comes in the form of two critical life assets: perspective and resilience.
Perspective tends to breed resilience. Enough resilience can carry you through anything that life throws at you. The perspective gained from one of these jobs will give you resilience in the face of challenges you’ll meet later in your career. Not to mention, the camaraderie that can be born out of shared suffering in these jobs produces some of the hardest laughs, best friendships, and even romances.
I spent the past five years working on Rikers Island as an internal affairs investigator, where I investigated NYC Department of Correction staff for things like bringing contraband into the jails, negligence in inmate deaths, and getting their guns stolen by prostitutes. Inmates hated me because I was a guy with a badge, while the correction officers saw me as a glorified hall monitor. Essentially, I served as the least popular person in the most violent and corrupt public agency in America. Fun times.
While attending to stomach-churning crime scenes, getting on the wrong side of wardens and other powerful people in various ways, and interviewing violent inmates amid filth and squalor that would make Jacob Riis blush, a colleague would usually make some comment about how this is the worst job they’d ever had.
While this job was no doubt challenging in unique and often traumatic ways, my first thought in response was always: “This is the worst job you’ve had?”
“At least I’m not 19 and stocking grocery shelves on the graveyard shift while my friends are at a party.”
“At least I’m not freezing my ass off in Times Square trying to sell comedy tickets — commission only — to confused Norwegian tourists.”
“At least we have health insurance and make decent, guaranteed money.”
Due to slogging through tough jobs in the past, I had the perspective necessary to survive working at Rikers. However, this ability is not immune to wear and tear. Recently, circumstances lead me to a reminder of where this perspective comes from and just how valuable it is.
Like Tom Brady, I came out of retirement this past fall. Unlike Brady, I did it because I love my family, not to avoid them. The impending birth of my first child coinciding with the fact that I had just taken a pay cut for a new job left me stressed. After racking my brain for easy ways to make up the difference in money, I decided to call up the temp agency I worked for during college.
Now, this temp agency is unique in that it primarily serves one type of client: high-end caterers. If you’re familiar with the NYC catering scene, then you don’t need any further explanation on why this qualifies as a “shitty” job. For the uninitiated, working for a caterer provides all the challenges and indignities of serving or bartending in a restaurant, without the tips. Yes, you do make a more generous hourly wage than those in a restaurant, but in the end, the math does not shake out in your favor. More importantly, if “high end” and “NYC” didn’t give it away, the nature of the people you are going to be serving is usually that of a Bravo villain.
Entitlement, monstrous egos, and abusive tantrums regularly being passed out like business cards at a Murray Hill happy hour permeate the industry’s culture. Catering company owners, the almighty client, shift captains, and even fellow servers/bartenders are all emotional landmines; ready to explode on an unsuspecting soldier carrying a tower of glassware or passing beef tartare. The sneaky physical toll is an added hurdle people new to the job rarely see coming. This is, of course, all endured to the tune of $20 an hour, which in New York can earn you the luxury of having five roommates in an outer borough studio apartment.
After working on a handful of events, I was left with a renewed perspective, mainly from one realization: this job sucks. To be fair, butlering hors d’oeuvres at a bat mitzvah or bartending at the Met Gala is not bricklaying. However, the relatively glamourous veneer does not make up for the soul-crushing reality that you are working a dead-end, meaningless job that serves only the most undeserving. This is lost on nobody, least of all the staff, the majority of whom are talented actors, playwrights, directors, models, and artists who are forced to suffer through this nightly ritual while they await their desired opportunity.
This experience also came with another, more valuable realization: the reminder that I had lived through depending on a job like this earlier in life. I had to retrace my career’s footsteps to have that perspective renewed. Now that I have it back, I have a newfound resilience in the face of life’s challenges and, more importantly, an appreciation and gratitude for life as it is. Hopefully reading this is sufficient for you to renew that type of perspective and you don’t, you know, have to throw the proverbial ill-fitting bowtie on and get your hands dirty.
